Classical music in the modern world

[Megan]

I have always wondered if Bach, or even Beethoven came back and heard their music being played in airports and restaurants, cafe's around the world , how they would react. I am just guessing with Beethoven , but in a sense I think he would be pulled two ways. He was very much a democrat , if not a revolutionary and the idea of millions of people listening to his music through technology might have appealed to him. But he would not have failed to have noticed the kind of appalling lack of culture of modern consumer society.
Bach, I don't think would have approved because his music , though it has great global appeal for me is fixed in the protestant and rather closed world of Liepzig in the early 18th century. I don't think Vivaldi would have minded and would probably have said, where are my royalities?.

Can you imagine Stockhausen being heard in airport lounges , though in a way Stockhausen is what the modern world is all about, ie, chaos, but most people , I suppose want a refuge by escaping into more classically beautiful music.

We went into a cafe this morning and was very pleasantly surprised to hear classical music play, from Handel's , the sheep shall graze, and Boccherini's minuet, and a Vivaldi piece, and others by a Spanish guitarist.

[Chris]

I think they would all be pleased that their music had endured and was so famous and was enjoyed by so many. But I think many of them, Beethoven especially, would not like their music being treated as mere background music to other activities, as it often is.

[Peter]

Personally I can't stand muzak - even being forced to listen a snippet of a favourite Beethoven sonata would infuriate me whilst I'm trying to sort out a train ticket! I suspect the composers would all feel the same in that they would hate their music being used in this cheap way - it is to be listened to properly, not treated as background. In Vivaldi's case, he would curse the day he wrote 'The Seasons'!

[Sorrano]

There is a certain Cage piece I wouldn't mind "hearing" in some of these places. And they could repeat it many times.

[Wyresider]

I've never seen a string of posts get so much into so little space. Megan + Chris + Peter get us there by a fun (but still quite short) journey, then Sorrano masters hyperspace and gets to the same point in a single leap. I agree with Sorrano, but I enjoyed Megan's detour all the same -- she visited a lot of good points on the way, worth not missing, even if Peter had to recover the helm to get us to port.

Thanks, guys -- you helped me sort out my own feelings on the same subject.

[Chaszz]

Probably we should all be grateful that the masters' music has survived this long and we can still hear it. Perhaps a bit more pressing question is whether anyone is creating music today that can hold even a candle against their sun.

A peasant in Beethoven's time would not have dared rent a concert hall and play his hornpipe ditties for an audience of knowledgeable music lovers. Yet today because of recording technology pop music is king -- the analogue of the peasant's ditties -- and musical standards have been endlessly cheapened as a result. (Not that jazz, rock and etc. do not have some excellences).

On the other end of the scale most "serious" composers are obsessed with dissonance and atonality and their situation could be summed up by Milton Babbitt's comment, "Who cares if they listen or not?" I recently read a complaint by the leader of a well-known New York City group called Bang on a Can that not enough people come to his concerts. I looked them up on the web and heard a predictable cacophony of dissonance, then wrote him that if he expects patrons to come he might give them something that they might conceivably want to hear.

Just a side note that Bach retired from active work in the church at around the age of fifty or fifty-five and spent the rest of his life in secular music even though he was still drawing a church salary. He worked on secular projects like the Art of Fugue and the Musical Offering and led weekly secular concerts at Zimmerman's Coffee House. So he was not a religious Protestant musician to the core during this time. And throughout his life he was interested in and influenced by secular works by Vivaldi and the French Baroque composers and others. He looked outward, soaking up both religious and non-religious influences from all over, and was not isolated and insular except in that he rarely traveled. I think he would welcome all the attention he gets today.

[Quijote]

Personally I can't stand muzak - even being forced to listen a snippet of a favourite Beethoven sonata would infuriate me whilst I'm trying to sort out a train ticket! I suspect the composers would all feel the same in that they would hate their music being used in this cheap way - it is to be listened to properly, not treated as background [...]

I am glad to hear that, Headmaster. Why then do so many people put on "a bit of classical" when working, mowing the lawn or other mundane activities? I can't stand the fact that people use music is this cavalier way.

[Peter]

I am glad to hear that, Headmaster. Why then do so many people put on "a bit of classical" when working, mowing the lawn or other mundane activities? I can't stand the fact that people use music is this cavalier way.

Because they can! Also don't forget we are trained musicians and our approach is therefore different, not everyone is listening out for that dominant 13th!

[Quijote]

Because they can! Also don't forget we are trained musicians and our approach is therefore different, not everyone is listening out for that dominant 13th!

Yes, they can, you are right. And I cannot change that, cultural totalitarian though I may be. Still, I am reminded (and inspired by the fact) that Beethoven himself would throw an absolute "wobbly" if anyone dared not pay attention whilst he was playing. I realize that the "modes of musical consumption" have changed, but I can't help feeling that our listening has become diluted. Personally, I cannot drive (safely) and listen to music; neither can I do so involved in any other activity. Music is for listening to, seriously, consciously and (hopefully) intelligently. If you treat it in any other way, you treat it as muzak.

[Sorrano]

Maybe the use of music in media, such as Television and movies, have helped a great deal to dilute our listening practices.

[Quijote]

Maybe the use of music in media, such as Television and movies, have helped a great deal to dilute our listening practices.

Yes, I think that is right. There is one activity I can do whilst listening to music: making love, but I will not reveal the music I like for that particular activity (it is not Beethoven).
And another : walking late at night on a deserted beach with an MP3 player (or "Walkman", depending on the available technology). But in both cases, I am listening attentively. Well, slightly less in the first context I gave.

[susanwen]

If you won't say, then we must speculate!

I hope it is not Chopin's "Minute Waltz."

[Quijote]

If you won't say, then we must speculate!
I hope it is not Chopin's "Minute Waltz."

Hah ! Excellent !

[Peter]

Hah ! Excellent !

Does that mean she guessed correctly?!

[Quijote]

Does that mean she guessed correctly?!

No. I will help you : it is not the 1812 Overture (bang, crash, wallop ...).